Just A Stranger On A Bus
by Thanfiction
Summary: He tries to help people. Missing scene from after 8.17.


He was kinda hot in a rumpled, broken way if you were into his type. No bags. No lunch. No iPod. Hind end of thirty-something, sixish feet, slim. Lost job wife kids and mind in that order stamped all over him from the badly fitting suit and trench to the three-day beard and uncombed hair. Eyes to die for, though, and at least he didn't stink like the dude from the Flagstaff to Vegas leg. Smelled a little like an electrical fire and salt and snow, and he didn't even twitch in the thousand mile stare out the window before the curiosity and boredom teamed up.

LA?

Yes.

Gonna hit it big as an actor?

No.

Got a name, chatty Cathy?

Castiel.

Greek?

I'm an angel of the Lord.

Oh that kind of crazy. Fucktacos. The last thing on the list of things needed right now was some Blues Brother on a mission from his cornflakes in the full Greyhound awkward thigh press for the next 16 hours. At least he hadn't started witnessing yet. Probably too busy hearing God in the scrub brush and beer cans. And it could just stay that way, yessiree Bob.

The Kindle ran out of battery after 25 shades or so because the sockets never worked on these things, and it wasn't missed. Overrated piece of crap. Thank fuck for Torrent. Paying money for that would have been a crime. The sandwich and Cheetos were long gone, the big can of Arizona too, but it wasn't hungry as much as fidgety and it could wait for another smoke stop at another gas station where the lights would start flickering and the cash register fucking up as soon as they got there, probably.

The talking had happened for long enough that two stops had been missed before it was even fully realized. Everything. Everything was coming out. Even that. And that. And the things you never say, even to yourself. Never, ever say. The lies, the stupid, stupid mistakes, the things that should have been so busted and the things that got blamed but for once weren't true and the things that were but did life have to be so cruel about it. Fair and unfair. Actions and consequences. What you did to them. What they did to you. The dreams and the slipping through fingers. The need and the empty and the longing and the lust and the hope and feeling it break and calling yourself strong for surviving when you didn't do it on purpose. The Church and the Jobs and the Girlfriends and the Boyfriends and the Doctors and the Pills and the Hospital and the scars that run crossways and the ones that run long and the ones no one can see. The reasons, the real reasons, not the ones you use and not the ones you want.

The good things, too. That morning and that one perfect night. The dancing naked and the swimming clothed. The contest won in third grade for coloring and the really stupid radio call-in one just last month that still felt like the lottery even if it was just fifty bucks for Applebees. Because that was ribs and have you ever tasted ribs when you haven't been able to afford anything but ramen for a month because food stamps won't take you because when you were oh but you know that I already told you anyway ribs. With a big, half-frozen beer and chocolate cake I nearly threw up it was gorgeous.

Maybe sleeping on him or maybe leaning or maybe just talking talking straight through, and sometimes there's snot and tears and once almost throwing up and can't stop shaking for a whole time between stops. Why no one notices doesn't make sense but isn't questioned. It's a private space, a private universe, and it's safe there even though he never says anything, just sometimes a hand on the knee, the shoulder, the back of the head running long, elegant fingers that are like workman's and artist's hands at once through hair that never catches and pulls, even if it should.

LA should be further away and should have been a lot sooner. But the sun is coming up and the talking is ebbing to an end like bleeding out. What's left behind is hollow, shaking, broken, there's no way to stand up without shattering irrevocably until one of those hands finds the tear-streaked, shivering jawline and there's something in those eyes so old, so unthinkably old, not not not at all on the any end of thirty anything.

You precious creature...I wish you could understand...you are so loved.

It's a dirge for something for him. But only for him. Along the touch of the fingers in a surge of warm nothing is a birth of something else. Like surfacing from drowning, a first breath and a last miasma. It's ok now. Doesn't matter how. It is. And those eyes have seen the death of empires. They'd know.

He's gone. Didn't see him go and it doesn't matter. Getting off the bus is the movement of a newborn thing on shaking legs but it's ok. It's ok. It's going to be ok. Someone in the too tight polyester with the dog on the chest wants to know if it's ok. Something about looking like crying. Was there a problem with your seatmate? Should have said something. Who was he?

Castiel.

He was an angel of the Lord.

It's ok.


End file.
